International Insider: Australia’s Attention Battle; Vertical Video Rises; Kevin Macdonald On Pep Guardiola
Deadline's International Insider newsletter for 21 August 2026 covers two research-driven stories from the international TV and film industry. A major Screen Australia study, the first of its kind, found that while three-quarters of Australians want more local content, half spend less than a third of their viewing time on it, with a third saying they struggle to find Australian shows and films at all. This matters because Australia is a significant English-language market with outsized influence in Hollywood, and the findings suggest a wider risk that audiences drift towards overseas content and YouTube creators if local shows remain hard to discover.
Australia's screen industries contributed more than A$11 billion (about $7.8 billion) to the local economy in 2023/24, yet the discoverability problem persists despite acclaimed local hits such as Colin From Accounts, Top End Bub and The Narrow Road to the Deep North. In response, producer Alison Hurbert-Burns has launched a new company, The Set Up, with Bruna Papandrea and Steve Hutensky's Made Up Stories, dedicated solely to Australian stories for local and global platforms. Separately, a new report from Hernan Lopez's Owl & Co argues that previous estimates of the vertical video and microdrama sector have understated its true scale by focusing narrowly on microdrama, which it values at $4 billion, while the broader vertical video economy is worth far more.
- Screen Australia study: locals want more Australian content but can't find it
- New production company The Set Up launches to focus solely on Australian stories
- Owl & Co report says vertical video's value is far bigger than microdrama estimates suggest
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Australia produces plenty of well-regarded television and film, from comedy hit Colin From Accounts to the acclaimed drama The Narrow Road to the Deep North, and the sector added more than A$11 billion to the local economy in the 2023/24 financial year. Despite this, a new industry-wide study by Screen Australia, the government body that supports local screen production, has found that most Australians want to watch more homegrown content but struggle to find it, often watching very little of it even when they say they want more.
The findings matter beyond Australia because it is a large English-speaking market that has historically fed talent and stories into the wider international industry, including Hollywood. If local audiences cannot easily find Australian shows on the platforms they use, there's a risk they turn instead to overseas content or informal video platforms like YouTube, which has knock-on implications for how sustainable local production remains. In response, producer Alison Hurbert-Burns has set up a new company called The Set Up, working with Bruna Papandrea and Steve Hutensky's Made Up Stories, focused specifically on backing Australian stories for both local and international audiences.
The same newsletter also touches on a separate trend: the growth of vertical video, the short, phone-shaped clips and serialised "microdramas" designed to be watched on mobile screens. A new report from Hernan Lopez's company Owl & Co argues that earlier estimates of this sector's value focused too narrowly on microdrama alone, and that the wider vertical video business is worth considerably more than previously thought.